The Blood-Dimmed Tide
by fractalmuse
Summary: "The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned/The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity." Set in the Warring States Period, concerning the children of certain prominent clans. Spoilers for the entire manga. This story has very dark content.


_You belong to me_  
_My snow white queen_  
_There's nowhere to run_  
_So let's just get it over_

"Snow White Queen", Evanescence

* * *

When the door cracks open it is all the boy can do to remain quiet.

He tries, he tries his best to rein his senses in and shut himself off from the fear, but each footstep against rough stone is a hammer blow ricocheting through his throbbing skull. The intruder's chakra runs untamed, thickening in the air, a thundercloud pregnant with the promise of black rain. It sends a shiver down his spine and a _thing_ (don't think of it, don't think of _that_) coursing through his blood. He will not forget this chakra, as long as he lives.

Somewhere in the darkness the other boy whimpers (hair wiry soft like clean straw between his fingers) and the sound has him scrambling on his hands and knees half across the chamber, towards the weak light of the entrance, before a soft chuckle brings him back to himself. He knows what he must look like, naked as the day he was born, on all fours before one of his captors. It takes several shuddering breaths for the blush to fade from his cheeks, before he can raise his eyes to the pair gazing down at him; what he sees in them sends the blood rushing back to his face. The rest of the men lost interest long ago, when they ran out of questions (there was precious little for the boy to give up anyway) and now he is pretty much ignored. There is only one reason for visits like this, and they both know it. They both know that he will do everything he's asked, no matter how foul, no matter what twisted reaction is clawed out of him. After all, he was the one to _beg_, to _offer_ (he is a shinobi is a tool), because he will die a thousand times over before the summer child cowering in the shadows behind him suffers the touch of black rain. It was a fair trade, one innocence for another, and he has his own side to keep. So when the man opens his mouth -

"Come."

\- he goes without hesitation. He is led down the corridor to a cell like the one he just left, only this one is empty. He looks up into the face above him, trying to read in the set of the mouth and brow how well he will be able to sleep today, but the door swings shut and plunges them both into darkness. Eyes slide shut in reflex - is this is good or bad? There are times when his features twist into something that would pass for pleasure on another face, but those at least are times when his tormentor (his saving grace, his chance at redemption) touches him with something that would pass for gentleness in another setting. In the dark there is no need for pretense that brushes so dangerously close to reality, but then…but then…

It comes as a shock when his head snaps to the side and out of his thoughts, sending him staggering. He raises his hand to his cheek an instant before the pain blooms, bites down on his lip to keep from crying out. _So that's how it is._ The second blow has spots dancing across his closed lids; the third drives the breath out of his heaving lungs. His mind wanders, as it's prone to do in this situation. What battle has been lost, he wonders, what comrade fallen to provoke this need? A dark thrill runs through him at the thought that his - that _they_ may have - the back of his skull slams into the floor, it's fractured, it has to be, surely it has kissed stone one too many times. His hold on consciousness is wavering, and for a moment he is tempted to simply let go; maybe by the time he comes round it will be over and he can pretend that nothing more than a beating happened here -

He fights the drowsiness, sinks his teeth ever deeper until warm tangy wetness pools around them. It takes several minutes for the haze to clear completely from his mind, for him to remember where and what he is. There is a hand gripping both his wrists while the other is…the finger is dry, too dry and it _hurts_. It hurts almost as much as the first time (and when he made his proposal he hadn't _known_, he didn't _know_ that someone would ever want to touch another person in _there_), but he has a gently smiling child to think about and so he forces his hips to meet the intrusion, to roll upwards the way he's been shown. The smallest of strangled whimpers greets the second finger slips inside him, pressure building in that odd open-close motion (like a pair of scissors - the image pops into his head out of the blue, and it's strangely fitting). But the hand against his wrists is gone, instead brushing again and again across his chest, his sides, his stomach, _lower_, and that _thing_ is back, that curious heat he cannot name; he knows he is trembling with something more than just pain.

Bile rises in his throat when his own hands (his body is a tool, a _tool_, and there is no room for shame) fumble at the man's sash, when they slip under his trousers to his…to his…He is answered with a groan and a particularly hard thrust as he trails thin fingers through the wetness at its head, slides them over its length (it makes this squelching sound, horribly loud in the darkness). His insides tighten at the thought of taking it into his body, so much so that they seem to grasp at those fingers as they are withdrawn, and he lets out a yelp when he is tugged forward into space to collapse against a still-clothed chest. He isn't _ready_, he's not -

That chakra is surrounding him, pressing down on his bare skin, ghosting over the harsh lines inscribed on his stomach; his own chakra flow is choked and sluggish beneath them, a souvenir from an early escape attempt. The impossible thickness that has replaced the fingers is white-hot, relentless (he must not scream, he _will not scream_), but in comparison it's almost bearable - the heat in his blood is gone now, completely eclipsed by sheer agony. A small part of him is glad, glad that in this moment there's no confusion about what he's feeling (by all the kami, it _hurts_), that there is nothing _wrong_ colouring the moans and cries he keeps locked behind tightly pressed lips. When the hands raising and lowering him over and over on that lap slip away he almost falters, almost, but to hold back now is _boy, boy, the other boy_ and so he doesn't stop, can't stop rocking himself into the pain. He shudders, fists clutching at the shirt before him, burying his face in the soft fabric (weak, _weak_). For some reason it always smells like…like...he rubs his nose along it, swallowing a choked sob. Warm breath murmurs against his ear: _so eager_ and _fuck you're tight_ and other things he doesn't really understand, and a few he'd rather not think about (_you're mine you're mine you little whore_). Words break down into grunts and short, hard thrusts, and he knows what's coming but nothing will ever prepare him for the rush of wetness that fills what space is left in him.

They are both panting, gasping (this is the only release he allows himself, this is the only relief he deserves, his itching eyeballs mean nothing, nothing at all). Arms tighten around him and lift; waves of dizziness and nausea roll over him as the man rises to his feet. There is more dripping out of him than just…_that_, his thighs are much too sticky. When the light of the corridor hits his eyes he turns his head and retches, bringing up little more than sour fluid. There is a muffled curse somewhere above him as his world tilts alarmingly and -

\- nothing.

* * *

There is a curious wetness, a warm weight on his chest. The other boy whispers a single word over and over.

_Don't cry_, he thinks. _Stop crying_. His throat is too tight to voice the words.

* * *

When the door cracks open it is all the boy can do to remain quiet.

He tries, he tries his level best to rein his senses in and shut himself off from the yearning, but each footstep against rough stone is a hammer blow ricocheting through his throbbing skull. The intruder's chakra runs untamed, thickening in the air, heavy with the scent of kuromatsu and a slight whiff of wisteria. It sends a shiver down his spine and a small spark afire in his belly. He has known this chakra _forever_, and he will never forget it, not till the day he dies.

Somewhere in the darkness there is a gasp and a cry and he is scrambling backwards, away from the weak light of the entrance. He knows what he looks like, naked as the day he was born, and his chest constricts at the thought of someone seeing, someone _knowing_, they can't know what he's _done_, what he _is_, and _what is he doing here_? He can't - he can't - he has nothing left to offer, nothing else to bargain with, he can't keep him safe, not here, not _here_ -

_Please, please!_

\- he doesn't know what he's begging for, what he wants, but there are hands on him and they are tugging him forward and his cheek is squashed against something cold and hard and it's too much, he can't breathe, and a face is buried in his hair and warm breath sobs against his ear (_i've missed you I've missed you what have they _done_ to you what did they _do) and he can't _breathe_. Metal clinks and cloth shifts and a soft weight settles over his head; his arms are being pulled in odd directions and it takes a moment to realize what is happening. When he does the force of it sends him to his knees, because he's wearing a shirt, a _shirt_, and the aroma of black pine is swirling all around him and he doesn't know what to do but hands are holding him, hands are tracing a familiar pattern into his skin, hands that are small and still soft and so, so _warm_. He is shaking and trembling and maybe it's a dream and maybe it's a nightmare and maybe…maybe…

His voice is hoarse, rusty beyond belief, and the hands stiffen for an instant before they resume their soft circles. There's a slow, noisy exhale before his words are echoed.

"The other?" (he sounds the same, the same, he sounds the same as he always has) "...Kawarama?"

Kawarama. Yes, that was his name. He can allow himself to remember it now, to connect the flowing word (slipping between the roof tiles) to hair the colour of straw and a smile he has killed for, a smile he has...he has a name, too, come to think of it, and maybe it's safe here to -

"Tobirama!"

He has a name, and the woman at the door has a name too (huge brown eyes stare at him from over her shoulder, and he has never seen such a wonderful sight in his life, Kawarama Kawarama _Kawarama_). The boy whose hands are framing him has a name, a name that's steady and dependable and right. And he has a name. A name. He does, he does, he's

"Yes," he answers, because he can. "Oh," because the world is spinning again but it's warm now and he isn't shivering quite so much anymore.


End file.
